Low life

After Cow Girl abruptly terminated our relationship, there was a long radio silence between us, during which time I was fairly demoralised. I’d thought I was lovable. If anyone could be bothered to look hard enough, or dig deep enough, I’d always thought, they’d find gold. But Cow Girl had struck no pay dirt, knew with an old sixty-niner’s instinct that it wasn’t worth looking any further, and she had got out with an almost indecent haste. The characters in Sex and the City had a handy mathematical formula for calculating how long it takes to recover from a broken relationship. Work out how long the relationship lasted, they said, then halve it. I’d known Cow Girl for five weeks, and for one of those weeks I was in India.

This year I was once again sumptuously entertained at the Cheltenham Festival by the racing tipster Colonel Pinstripe in his tented chalet. On Gold Cup day I presented myself at the flouncy entrance and the Colonel, standing just inside, like the custodian of a harem, warmly welcomed me in. Before introducing me to the company, the arm came around my shoulder and he steered me discreetly to one side. ‘My girlfriend thinks she’s got a stalker,’ he said anxiously. ‘Oh, no!’ I said. ‘Well, she’s not my girlfriend yet,’ he said, waggling his eyebrows, clearing his throat and adjusting his pink Hermès tie. And that’s how it is with the Colonel. He likes to get you off on the right foot with a daft joke. It sets the right tone.

Beside the roundabout a woman was standing with her thumb out. Late thirties. Black knee-length boots. Old jeans. No coat. The thumb was resigned, indifferent. I swung in sharply, positioning the door handle precisely level with the thumb. She pulled the door open and sat in. A red, careworn face. I stated my destination. She said she would ride with me as far as Graves Cross. I clicked the lever into drive and we set off up the hill. Silence. She stared resignedly ahead. If hitch-hikers prefer not to speak, it’s fine. I’m not one of those who feel they are owed an explanation or a potted biography. I usually have the music turned up in any case. But this woman’s indifferent, fatalistic air impressed me.

I woke in room 272 of the West Ham United Quality Hotel faced with the usual questions. What peculiar instinct had brought me safely back when I couldn’t even remember checking in? Were my phone, wallet and car keys still with me? Had I made an exhibition of myself? Committed a crime? I leapt out of the bed and checked my pockets. My clothes were draped over the chair in an amazingly orderly manner. My wallet and phone were there — thank God — but no keys. I tried to retrace my footsteps in my mind. It was a complete blank. Of the match I could remember nothing. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that this alcoholic blackout was the worst yet, covering an entire afternoon and evening. Not the slightest impression remained of any of it.

‘I’ve got some really nice MDMA. Really, really nice,’ he added in a gravelly, slightly sinister undertone. Unusual, this. It’s not often these days that Trev gives a ringing endorsement like that. Normally, he’s scathing about drugs. Not about the morality or the dangers but about the poor quality. He’s like our local consumer watchdog. Don’t get him started about the local coke, for example. It’s all rubbish, he says. Ask him does he know anybody that’s got any coke and Trev laughs at you. Offer him some and he’s dismissive. So for Trev to mention that there’s a drug doing the rounds that is ‘really nice’ is really surprising.

‘How are you getting on?’ said my landlady. ‘We can see the moor from our place, and every time I’ve looked at it lately it’s been shrouded in fog.’ ‘It has been foggy,’ I admitted. ‘Wet, too. And the pipes froze again.’ ‘Would you like to come wassailing?’ she said. ‘There’s nothing like a wassail to help you through a cold, wet February.’ So last weekend I went a-wassailing with my landlady. She’d said to bring a gun if I had one. If not, something noisy to frighten away the evil spirits. And it’ll probably be muddy, she said, so bring boots. I don’t have a gun. But I did have a pair of boots I wanted to try out.

The phone rang. (My ring tone is the crowd in the Bobby Moore stand at West Ham singing ‘I’m forever blowing bubbles’.) I was lying on a mattress on the floor. Early morning sun was streaming in through tall windows. A cat, one of those skinny, sharply intelligent-looking ones, was vigorously grooming itself near my feet. I found the phone on a nearby table, next to an unfinished glass of whisky. I took a sip of the whisky and caught the call before it went to answer phone. Trev. ‘Hey, Dude!’ he yelled, clearly in cracking form this fine morning. I hadn’t spoken to Trev on the phone or in the flesh since last year. It was marvellous to hear his voice again. ‘I’ve got a favour to ask,’ he yelled.

My boy and I were standing together outside the front door of his partner’s house while he smoked a cigarette. Since my boy’s first (and his partner’s fourth) child was born, they haven’t smoked inside the house. Fine drizzle was swirling in the orange glow of the streetlight. In comfortable silence we stood and contemplated the view of the council estate where he lives. A tradition has grown up for dumping ‘problem’ families here from across the county, so this particular slough of despond is notorious for drugs, petty vandalism and domestic violence. The most pathetic of last week’s crop of court cases reported in the local paper was that of a 19-year-old man charged with possession of 0.

I was invited to the local garage’s postponed Christmas party this year not just because I’d been a good customer. Perhaps more importantly I’d spent a good deal of time in the tiny office, leaning on the counter, chatting to Jim, the owner. It’s warm in Jim’s office if you keep the door shut, and his arthritic old lurcher, dozing fitfully in his basket, adds a homely touch. We’ve been talking books, Jim and I. Jim has read only one book in his life, he says: Michael Schumacher’s head mechanic’s biography. Recently, he’s embarked on a second, Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler. He ordered it after seeing it at the top of an online bookstore’s bestseller list.

My car was at the garage for repairs so often last year that they asked me to their Christmas party. The event was snowed off and rescheduled for last Friday night. The prospect of a party scared as well as exhilarated me. I had been living exclusively among my own banal thoughts for so long I was prey to the peculiar fear that in company they might be laughably transparent. I had a strip wash in the kitchen sink using stream water heated in a saucepan on the wood-burning stove, shaved with an old Bic disposable razor I found in the bathroom cabinet, staunched the bleeding with cigarette papers I found in a kitchen drawer, and put on my least muddy jeans. It was still daylight when I emerged from the wood and headed across the open moorland to the car, which I leave beside the road.

This old tin miner’s cottage that I’m now living in is normally uninhabited in winter. The remoteness, incessant foul weather, guaranteed frozen pipes and impassable roads make the place unattractive for short-term tenants. ‘See how you get on,’ said the owner dubiously, when I offered to pay up front. ‘It might not be easy. You might hate it.’ I didn’t tell her that a little hardship, a little masochism, some exposure to the elements, is exactly what I am looking for. There is no running water at present. The pipe taking water from the stream and delivering it to the inside taps is still frozen, so I’m collecting my cooking and washing water in a feed bucket and a white china teapot. The water, when you see it in the teapot, is brown.

A kindly old charge nurse once took me aside after I’d appeared before a psychiatric hospital’s disciplinary committee accused of drunken behaviour. ‘Get yourself a good woman, old son,’ he counselled. ‘That’s what I did. Then you can take her to the pub, have a nice conversation, and learn to drink in a civilised fashion.’ Cow Girl enjoys a drink in a civilised fashion. She likes wine and knows a bit about it. When I’d told her, prior to our first meeting, that I was a pint of lager sort of a person and didn’t much like wine, she said she’d educate me. So whenever we’ve stayed at the hotel we’ve gone to the bar in the evening and I’ve had a lesson.

The registrar opened a screen and clicked and typed her way down a list of questions. I was ‘giving notice’ of our intention to be married after a statutory 15 days had passed. It was the day before Christmas Eve. ‘Has either of you been married before?’ she said. (She was tired and distracted. So many elderly people had died in this recent cold snap, she’d told me earlier, she was run off her feet.) ‘No,’ I said. ‘Your partner’s full name?’ she said, fingering her mouse. For a split second, before it came to me, my mind was a blank. The registrar eyed me speculatively as she touch-typed. ‘And her date of birth?’ Cow Girl was Pisces, I knew that much.

I weighed myself in India. There were scales in the hotel bathroom and I stepped up out of idle curiosity. I’d lost weight. In the three weeks since I’d met Cow Girl on a dating website, I’d lost three-quarters of a stone. I hadn’t even noticed. I weighed myself in India. There were scales in the hotel bathroom and I stepped up out of idle curiosity. I’d lost weight. In the three weeks since I’d met Cow Girl on a dating website, I’d lost three-quarters of a stone. I hadn’t even noticed. Later I rang her to report a conversation I’d overheard in the hotel gym. A perspiring English banker was telling the polite gym attendant how marriages were arranged in pre-industrial Japan.

Cow girl, my first encounter on the dating website, said she wanted to see me again, so the next weekend we met at the same hotel for another portion of the same. During the week she sent an email saying she couldn’t eat, and I’d assumed she was joking. But when she sprang out of her VW Golf to greet me she was visibly thinner, which was surprising, as she hadn’t had an ounce of fat on her to speak of to start with. She’d lost 5lbs, she said. Even more surprising was the admission that she’d been off her grub because she’d been in an emotional turmoil over the future of our relationship. The email about her not eating also included a link to a YouTube comedy clip taken from the TV series Green Wing.